The 7 Most Terrifying Mouths in Nature

The natural world is full of horrors, and if you've spent enough time on this website, you know that many of these horrors exist just behind the tenuous cloak of sanity that keeps us from screaming every time we leave the house. And sure, a lot of nature's creatures seem harmless, but then they open their mouths ...

#7. Hagfish Have Alien Jaws

We've already covered the hagfish's appetizing ability to produce copious amounts of grotesque, suffocating slime. But we saved you from the horror of seeing what it looks like when it opens its mouth. Let's do that now.

Scientists refer to the vagina dentata that is the hagfish's face as "two pairs of tooth-like rasps on the top of a tongue-like projection." We can only describe it in the language of screams.

Just to add insult to horror, it turns out that the hagfish doesn't even really need a mouth, considering that it can actually eat with its skin. It generally gets its nutrition from swimming around in putrid waters around decomposing corpses and absorbing the delicious corpse juices through its pores. It seems like the only reason it has four rows of yellow fangs is because God had to match a quota for horrible things.

But if you're utilizing the leatherback turtle for its powers of adorableness, make sure that you don't take a picture of it while it's yawning, because oh God, Jesus no, it looks like the sarlaac.

Those hundreds of jagged stalactites that line the turtle's mouth and esophagus all the way down to its horrible, horrible gut are called papillae, and they exist because the universe hates beauty, and also because the leatherback turtle's diet consists entirely of jellyfish and other soft-bodied, slimy invertebrates. Anyone who's ever tried to catch a jellyfish with two spoons would give their left nut for a fork, which is why the turtle is equipped with its own murder cavern. Those jellyfish are going nowhere.

documentingreality"Hey, I accidentally swallowed a Rolex. Why don't you reach your arm in and fish it out?"

Leatherbacks need an efficient funneling system to deposit their prey directly into their stomach, because with nearly zero nutrients in a jellyfish, the turtle needs to consume around 73 percent of its body weight every day. That's a lot of time spent chasing jellyfish that the turtle can't waste on inefficiency.

Unfortunately, the turtle can't tell the difference between jellyfish and plastic bags, so the cute and cuddly leatherback turtle is facing extinction from floating debris. And that sucks, because it's just as important to preserve nature's horror as it is to preserve its beauty. It reminds us of who's in charge.

Getty"One at a time, minions! Everyone will get their fair share of turtle loving."

#5. The Vampire Fish Is Just How It Sounds

You already know piranhas as the little ravenous balls of teeth that eat everything, but have you ever wondered what eats piranhas? We're glad you asked! Meet the payara, also known as the "vampire fish." That up there with it is Jeremy Wade, a British biologist who apparently isn't too attached to his nose.

You have to be toting some pretty hardcore weaponry to survive in the Amazon, and the vampire fish is packing a mouth full of knives designed to shank other fish prison-yard style. The teeth are so long -- up to 6 inches -- that it has to sheathe them in a holster built into the front of its face.

cqjYes, it stabs itself in the sinuses every time it closes its mouth.

They are closely related to piranhas, and piranhas also constitute most of their diet. It's like a monster that has evolved to eat other monsters. And while there have been no reports of a payara stabbing people in the kidneys and making off with their wallets, it's probably still a good idea not to go into the water.

#4. Cookie Cutter Sharks Just Want to Snack on You

Imagine you're alone in the dark, briny depths of the ocean, detached from the rest of your diving team, with nothing but heavy blackness and silence all around you. Then, quietly at first, you hear the sound of high-pitched voices approaching you. "Come play with us!" they say. "We want to be friends!"

Appearing only in deep water under cover of night, the cookie cutter shark is only 2 feet long, but it has the largest teeth relative to its size of any shark, contorting its face into a terrifying Bond-villain smile.

Norbert WuAdmit it. You're all just trying not to stare at its mighty finsticles.

As small as it is, the cookie cutter prefers to inflict hit-and-run attacks. As its name suggests, its signature move is to use the razor-sharp cookie cutter built into its face to quickly rip a circular chunk out of whatever tasty piece of flesh it comes across. Like the Flash, but attacking you with a melon baller. That's why its victims wind up looking like this:

And they're not picky about what they clamp onto. Whales, dolphins, other sharks and even submarines bear the circular scars of cookie cutter attacks. And in 2009, marathon swimmer Michael Spalding came out of the water after a midnight swim with an inch deep circular piece missing from his leg. Thanks, Mike. Now they know what we taste like.